January 17, 2012 (LiveAction.org) - Tell me if this has ever happened to you.

Its lunchtime. You are eating at your desk at work and decide to look at Facebook. Its as exciting as ever. Your aunt had a burrito for lunch. A girl you havent seen since college got a new tattoo. Someone is super happy its almost Friday.

Then you see that a virtual stranger (theres a double meaning in that) has commented on one of your posts. And she has said something so asinine that you put down your fried pickle (cause youre in Texas and you eat stuff like that) and respond.

Its daunting, the task before you. Do you even want to undertake this? Can you really change someones mind about abortion in one Facebook comment?*

Well, youre gonna try. So you launch into refuting whatever dumb thing the person just said. Theres no scientific concensus that life begins at conception! If we make it illegal, theyre gonna do it anyway! If youre against abortion, you should be against war, too! It could be any of these things, or something else.

So you drop a couple knowledge bombs, go back to your life, and hours later you find the following response:

Well, maybe youre right, but we cant legislate morality.

You look around for a candid camera. Is this an elaborate joke? No. Someone actually said that. Again. You sigh. And you type this:

Really? We cant legislate morality? What do you call it when we tell people they cant murder? Rape? Steal?

Lets do some Criminal Justice 101, shall we? There are two types of laws: malum in se and malum prohibitum. Malum in se is a Latin phrase meaning wrong in itself. Most of us feel that murder is wrong, therefore there is a law against it. Malum prohibitum means something is wrong because it is prohibited. For example: in the United States we have to drive on the right side of the road, not because driving on the left is inherently evil (Im lookin at you, England!) but because good order meant we had to pick one side. Because weve picked right, if you drive on the left, youre gonna get stopped. Try it, youll see.**

Malum in se laws are based on morality. Our laws here in the U.S. grew out of English Common Law, which in turn was based on Judeo-Christian morality. Now, old-timey English lawmakers did not sit around and go, Hmmm, what should we base our laws on? And then come up with the Bible because it had an attractive leather cover. Judeo-Christian morality was a part of the culture since the 7th century, and has in fact formed Western culture, culminating most recently in our humble little former colony, the United States.

Detractors will say English Common Law formed in the 5th century, before Christianity took hold in Britain. But the law as we know it didnt stop forming then. Christian men such as Henry de Bracton in the 13th century in England and Sir William Blackstone in the 18th century in the United States have had a tremendous impact on creating the laws we know today.

Whether you like it or not, the culture that created you is a Judeo-Christian culture. All the things you think are right and wrong were formed by Judeo-Christian principles. Why do you think its wrong to have slaves? Western culture is just like most other civilizations in that it engaged in slavery, but unique in that it is solely responsible for ridding the world of it. What about having a harem of concubines? That was common in pre-Christian cultures, not so much in the West today. Sacrificing virgins? No big deal to the pagans, but frowned upon in our time.

The idea of loving people more than ourselves, sacrificing for the poor, turning the other cheek these ideas were so revolutionary to the Roman world in which Christianity was born that they were scandalous. The tenets of Christianity made Christians so different they were almost universally hated. They were persecuted and killed all over the Roman Empire, until the Emperor Constantine had a vision. But I digress.

So those who cry that morals have no place in public policy are a little too late. Judeo-Christian morals created our public policy, created our culture, were the basis for our founding documents, guided the formation of our nation through the beliefs of our founders, and make up the fabric of our society.

Recently, a postmodern deconstructionist tendency to wipe American law clean of traditional morality has created not a sparkling tabula rasa, but a libertine morass. You dont have to be a Jew or Christian to recognize there is such a thing as right and wrong. Lately, it seems like the only evil people will recognize is believing in evil.

Ironically, the abortion advocate who tells us to keep our morals off her body is herself expressing a moral belief, a belief in liberty. I also believe in liberty, but I believe that in the phrase life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, life comes first for a very good reason: you cant have liberty without life. I believe a babys right to be alive trumps his mothers right to kill him for any reason she sees fit. Because, as we all know, there are limits to liberty. My liberty ends where, for example, it infringes upon another persons right to live. Hence, I am free, but not free to murder. I am free to drive, but not into someones restaurant. I am free to watch TV, but not Jersey Shore at Kristens house. And so on.

The idea of loving people more than ourselves, sacrificing for the poor, turning the other cheek these ideas were so revolutionary to the Roman world in which Christianity was born that they were scandalous. The tenets of Christianity made Christians so different they were almost universally hated. They were persecuted and killed all over the Roman Empire, until the Emperor Constantine had a vision. But I digress.

So those who cry that morals have no place in public policy are a little too late. Judeo-Christian morals created our public policy, created our culture, were the basis for our founding documents, guided the formation of our nation through the beliefs of our founders, and make up the fabric of our society.

*******************************

God bless America.

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased."

Alexander Hamilton

4
posted on 01/17/2012 4:40:05 PM PST
by trisham
(Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)

A female professor who occupied a tangential supervisory position vis-a-vis my unworthy self once told me that morality canot be controlled by laws, the subject being abortion. I reminded her that in spite of this being true, certain acts are routinely prohibited by law, which amounts to legislating behavior. There was no response.

Legislating morality is done all the time. You rightly bring up rape, murder,... Legislating morality also includes whether you can marry your: brother/sister, mother/dad, first cousin, aunt/uncle, grandparent, etc. It would include whether you marry one (or more) of each, or an animal... The list is endless. When one states that we can not legislate morality they have not thought the issue through.

If you can't legislate morality, ask them to go to the store and buy you a beer on Sunday morning. Or after midnight anyplace after midnight except a bar.

Ask them why two adopted siblings with no blood relation are prohibited from marrying when they reach adulthood.

Ask them why low flow toilets and low wattage lightbulbs have been imposed on this once proud and free nation.

Should a mother be permitted to dope and drink while she's pregnant? It's her body, after all. Except that her body ends at the umbilical cord. That is one or more unique persons attached to the other end. The father is accountable to that baby for the next 18 years. The mother could at least hold the same responsibility.

11
posted on 01/17/2012 4:52:15 PM PST
by a fool in paradise
(SecofState Clinton applauded when a POW named Gaddaffi was murdered in captivity & his body defiled.)

They don’t want to legislate morality? Could have fooled me. They really don’t want any morality. I prefer to thank them for Obamacare’s requirement for a federal medical record database. With that they have legislated away the “privacy” that was decided in Roe. In other words they have legislated away Roe.

Last election cycle a nitwit wrote an essay in our university’s student paper applying the same illogic to presidential choices: that one shouldn’t consider morality in choosing for whom one will vote.

It is the only time I’ve ever been moved to write a letter to the editor of the student paper, which began

It is not usually my custom to comment on student editorials, but when the stunning idiocy (and I use that word in both its classical and modern senses) of [name and title of article] evinced the reaction of C.S. Lewiss fictional Professor KirkWhat do they teach them in these schools?the realization that in the final instance, these schools is this university prompts me to write. Is it really the case that one can acquire three-fourths of a [university name] education (and majoring in Journalism, a field not distant from politics) without understanding that all political decisions are fundamentally moral decisions?

The letter was warmly greeted both by colleagues on the right (there are a surprising number in my department) and the left (including a liberal protestant campus minister).

15
posted on 01/17/2012 4:58:27 PM PST
by The_Reader_David
(And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know. . .)

Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.

What is your position on these two questions:

1. Should abortion be allowed in cases of rape or incest?

2. Is abortion a "states' rights" issue (e.g. should it be left to the states)?

22
posted on 01/17/2012 5:45:58 PM PST
by wagglebee
("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)

....Woman do not have the right to brutaly murder their own children by hiring a knife welding assassin to go into the God designed 'safe womb' which He's provided for a child..... carving these babies up like a piece of meat in a meatmarket.

And yes it is worse than the heathen pagans who sacrificed their children to their pagan Gods and Goddesses......at least they let the child be born.

2. Is abortion a “states’ rights” issue (e.g. should it be left to the states)?

1. No....there are other options such as adoption.

2. No....safe guarding our children should have never come so far that we even have to consider who has the right to govern over the matter. It should have never been an issue to begin with. However when any other criminal commits murder...it’s murder in all states.

..nor shall any person... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

Also, the Fourteenth:... nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The problem, obviously, is that "personhood" has yet to be defined. The Human Life Amendment is designed to do just that. Pretty sad that in the 21st. century we still haven't forced ourselves to acknowledge the humanity of an unborn child. The Bill of Rights is where the "right to life" is brought up and I'm pretty sure in the eighteenth century it didn't occur to society that such a given had to be spelled out. And we're progressing???

35
posted on 01/17/2012 11:07:05 PM PST
by boatbums
(Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. Titus 3:5)

There are many reasons why libs are wrong about abortion being a States Rights issues. For one, you are correct about our amendments outlining due process. Second, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of abortion. The Constitution requires states to adhere to that ruling. We need the Supremes to overule Roe v. Wade. Finally we need an amendment to the US Constitution granting personhood to the unborn.

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